When comparing Kaleidoscope vs Meld, the Slant community recommends Meld for most people. In the question“What are the best diff tools for Git?”Meld is ranked 3rd while Kaleidoscope is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Meld is:

In addition to comparing two files it also allows you to edit them right in place. What's more, the diffs are updated automatically.

Pros

Pro

Simple UI

Kaleidoscope has a beautiful and simple UI. It displays the two files that are being compared side to side, highlighting all the differences in a way that's easy to understand.

Pro

Diff within a line

When working in code, line-by-line diff can still be hard to spot small changes within the line. Kaleidoscope will highlight what has changed.

Pro

Supports comparing folders

Pro

Image difference viewer

Kaleidoscope supports image diff viewer in addition to git diff. It's able to find even the slightest changes between two versions of the same image.

Pro

Supports editing files directly

In addition to comparing two files it also allows you to edit them right in place. What's more, the diffs are updated automatically.

Pro

Comparing two or more different folders is supported

Meld allows users to compare two or three different folders for differences. But if a user wants to 'zoom in' and compare files contained in these folders, Meld gives you the ability to do so and launch file comparisons between files contained in different folders or in the same folder.

Pro

Free and open source

Meld is freely available on Linux, Windows and OSX (through MacPorts, Fink or Brew).

It's also open source and distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Pro

Three way comparisons

You can compare up to three different files for differences. Plus you can edit files from the comparison view and the diff will automatically update.

Pro

Supports some simple version control actions

Meld supports the major version control systems (Git, Mercurial, Subversion and Bazaar). You can launch file comparisons between different versions to see what parts changed before commiting.

Simple version control actions are also supported and possible. For example: commit/update/add/remove/delete files.

Pro

Easy to use and visually appealing

Stragihtforward and you don't need to read tutorials to use it. Just click and select and you instantly see how the difference and merges are connected to eachother.3 sub- windows, instead of 4, which reduces the mess during merge and let you see more of the surrounding files rather than just 5 lines.

Pro

Fast on Linux

Relatively fast on Linux.

Pro

Simple GUI

Pro

Internationalization

Through the GNOME Translation project and the translators that have worked for it, Meld is available in multiple languages. You can check if your language is supported in the translation statistics page.

If you can't find your language or if your language translation is unfinished and you want to help, you can do so by joining the GNOME Translation Project.

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Cons

Con

Paid software

Kaleidoscope is not free, costing $69.99.

Con

Mac OS only

Kaleidoscope is a Mac OS X only app.

Con

Slow on large files

While larger files are supported, they can take a long time to load. (20,000 lines+)

Program opens slow on Windows

Con

Very slow mac OS port

Con

No option to compare individual rows horizontally

Unlike other options, like Beyond Compare, Meld has no option to compare individual rows horizontally.

Con

Not having a base value to reference can make merging less certain

Con

No Explorer context menu integration

In Windows, there is no option to right-click and compare files easily.

Con

No official OSX Support

Some attempts have been made to port, but nothing easy or fully working.

Con

Missing contextual command line options

Not all contextual elements are exposed to the cli. Specifically the ability to follow our not follow symlinks, but also things like file system metadata parsing. These options and others can only be toggled via the gui's settings window.

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